This is the 18th in a series of largely demographic interviews that are conducted with established residents, to find out more about them and their involvement with Second Life, and to contrast the differences between their views and experiences and those of the newer residents. The questions may be tailored slightly for each interview; responses may be edited for purposes of clarity.
I've known Psyra pretty much as long as I've been in Second Life. Always a welcome sight and quite often a visually impressive one. His custom bird creations and avatars are well... extraordinary.
This is the 16th in a series of largely demographic interviews that are conducted with established residents, to find out more about them and their involvement with Second Life, and to contrast the differences between their views and experiences and those of the newer residents. The questions may be tailored slightly for each interview; responses may be edited for purposes of clarity.
I bumped into Olmia while I was doing some photography at the ABC Island sandbox tower. She was fun to talk to, and I was able to talk her into telling us a bit more about herself.
How did I miss this? Oh, right, that pesky RL of mine. Everyone's favorite watermelon-themed critter, Torley Linden, has penned a mighty post entitled '10 debug options you should know about', and it's fantastic. I only knew one of these, and I'm skinned if I might not just break my self-imposed SL Sabbatical™ to go in-world to try these out!
Best of all, even many months later, #1 helps me with the typing animation issue I've been gnashing my teeth over for almost as long as I've been in SL! Thanks, Torley! Thanks also to Tree Kyomoon for being my typing model!
Yes, folks, "sculpties" will soon arrive on the preview grid. Torley Linden made a blog entry on the official Linden blog regarding this momentous occasion. SLI reader Tao Takashi was able to get some information out of Robin and Joe Linden, with the announcement that sculpties will be added to a beta client next week. I guess we'll have to wait just a bit longer to taste the forbidden fruit. *sigh*
What will sculptable prims mean for us? Watch this machinima and see for yourself. Imagine being able to bypass the 31 prim limit of a vehicle because you molded the shape. Imagine lower prim avatars and furniture. Hell, just imagine, in general! This is truly the biggest news that has come out of Second Life since flexi-prims!
The ARG ended on a positive note, with qDot explaining the reasoning behind Cubesque and CubeOverload. For those curious, Funk Schnook appears to be the "winner" for finding that old blog entry. What was your opinion of the mystery?
Without so much as a word from other Lindens until now, Torley LInden has commented on an earlier entry from today with a blog post. In the blog, they acknowledge that there have been some inventory issues, including the complete newbie wipe I am suffering, while linking to my original post about the issue. They offer some likely scenarios related to inventory issues and the steps to report them. Comments are turned off, which is probably a wise move considering how angry and scared some of the residents are.
Known victims of the wipe at this time are moo Money (me), Jaxi Morrison, wife of SLProfiles creator Yo Brewster, Tatiana Vanguard, and Forseti Svarog, of the Electric Sheep Company. If you are a victim of the newbie inventory wipe, please post a comment here and I will add your name to the list.
Jeska Linden has posted on the Official Linden Blog that the latest Second Life Newsletter is now available on their website, and in world as well. It features stories about librarians improving the library experience in Second Life, Toley covering whats new in the knowledge base, and how Linden Lab is keeping Second Life going while it grows so quickly.
Also, they are no longer emailing the newsletter to readers. Considering email newsletters are basically just antiquated SPAM filter bait, you shouldn't be too sad. However, if you feel like you can't live without your newsletter fix, you could sign up to get the RSS feed, or possibly read their blog instead.
Torley Linden announces that the Linden Answers forum is now closed. Reasons cited for the closure include the same questions being asked over and over, questions that have already been answered in other channels being posted, and questions and bug reports that should be handled by other means being posted there, essentially making it very difficult to keep up with and provide coherent and relevant responses.
A new procedure has been added to allow people to request articles and information through the knowledge-base system. It remains to be seen if this becomes as sadly choked as the Linden Answers forum became.
Prokofy Neva, certainly one of Second Life's most outspoken and energetic critics of Linden Lab and it's policies was banned today from the official Linden Blog, apparently for his comments in this thread. He received an IM from Torley Linden informing him of the ban, apparently for 'trolling'.
Needless to say, Neva was not impressed. "I haven't 'trolled' or done any of those silly MMORPG hangover notional things. I believe that it's right to keep asking the Lindens for accountability for the actions of libsecondlife, which they have joined, and which they have approved."
Neva doesn't see that he should be singled out, "I've merely stayed on the issue, and I'm not wearing a tinfoil hat, I realize copybot doesn't really pose any threat, I'm asking the larger issues. I am not the only one to raise serious questions about the three things produced so far by this group: jumbo prims, god-mode stalking, and copybot. Even if these things are proven harmless, or are now disabled, or aspects of their use are now a TOS actionable offense, there is still very serious issues surrounding their immoral actions, griefing, and cynical sense of impunity."
Neva will fight the ban, of course. "I've written a letter of protest to Cory already," he said.
Torley Linden explains how to use the new snapshot tools in Second Life. Also, he provides some advice on how to make your pictures more interesting. Definitely worth watching.
Drum roll, please: the date and time of the registration of the millionth user was October 18th, 2006, at 08:05:45 AM, SL Time. The one millionth resident's name is Farley Atlantis, and I'll be contacting him/her soon for an interview (if he/she will have me!), but I know that you're all waiting for the name of the winning resident.
Interestingly enough, only 3 people guessed the date correctly. With a prediction of 8:30 AM, the winner is ...
*bated breath*
Mystra Hyde!
Mystra, congratulations! I'll be contacting you soon with your winnings, and an offer to have an interview up on the site, which you may of course decline. If any of you know Mystra, let him/her know he/she's won!
I'd like to thank Torley, Robin, and Jim Linden for providing the precise date and time, and all of our wonderful prize suppliers: Coal Nelson, Six Kennedy, Jakkal Dingo, Trinity Serpentine, Mistress Midnight, and Ordinal Malaprop! Please patronize these artists; they make wonderful things! Thank you all for your entries, you made this contest fun! *tail madly wagging*
Millions of Us, a metaverse media management company, is involved in an interesting event occurring as we speak, and for the next 72 hours. Versu Richelieu will be spending 3 days in the store window of Datavision, an electronics superstore in New York, with only her laptop as a source for entertainment, communication, and nourishment. She won't be eating her computer, though she will be using it to order food and anything else she might need online.
Additionally, she'll be spending her 72 hours in SL, in an attempt to build an equivalent model of the surrounding blocks in which she's ensconced. The best part? You can see what she's doing in both worlds at http://www.nyclivewindow.com/!
When I arrived at the sim in which she was building, I was amazed to see a metric tonne of Lindens there: Sabin, Ben, MichaelFrancis, Jeska, Milo, Torley were all in attendance, watching Versu build while she danced. Versu, I wish you luck. Keep hydrated and make us proud, soldier!
I am having big problems in SL at the moment. Yesterday, in an empty sim with one other person, no packet loss, no time dilation and an OK fps, I was finding that there was a 5-15 second lag in my text appearing, my avatar kept typing on her own, and some of the comments were scrambled and arrived in the wrong order.
I hope that it can be nailed, and hopefully in the next update, because the other problems which I associate with this problem, rubber banding etc, are making building difficult. Personally, I have crashed more over the last week than any time I can remember. About ten times yesterday.
I spent the day thinking around a new project, and admiring the work Oclee has done towards our Burning Life entry.
Our Torley has done a little QuickTime movie showing a brief overview of how to navigate the Official Linden Lab Blog. This is useful, but what's more interesting to me is that we get to hear Torley's Real Voice! And it's a pleasant voice, as well!
Torley, if you type as quickly as you speak, it's no wonder you have RSS! And, of course, here I'm referring to Repetitive Stress Syndrome, not Really Simple Syndication, which is a technology that Torley mentions in the video. We also get to hear the 'proper' pronunciation of YAYZERAMA! All this time I've been pronouncing it the 'improper', or 'heretical' way; who knew?
I look forward to more of these little how-to movies. It's the next best thing to being there!
OMGWTFBBQ! Chances are, if you don't know Torley, you've heard of her. Arguably SL's most popular and well-loved resident, she started her Second Life as Torley Torgeson, and only recently became a Linden. She's kept the watermelon colors, though, and continues to update her look. She graciously granted me an interview last week, and we covered a lot of ground. In fact, I was so busy that I didn't get more than a few photos. Seen above, 'Tollie', holding onto her kitty. Apologies to the Torley Fans out there! Torley, thank you for being such a wonderful interviewee!
Before we start, however, I have to give the opening words to resident Kumi Kuhr, who, before Torley and I tp'd away for the interview had this to say:
Kumi Kuhr: OMG Kumi Kuhr: you are Torley Kumi Kuhr: you look very weird
SLI: So, first question: How did you pick Torley as your name?
Torley Linden: I picked "Torley" as my name, because that just happens to be my "real name"! I couldn't think of anything better... and in Second Life, I'm still... me. I know that sounds silly but, hey, I couldn't come up with anything else.
SLI: Torley is an unusual name; is it familial?
Torley Linden: "Torley" is actually short for my full name -- it's Thai, and many many letters. So we'll just go with "Torley". :) Some people think it's English. Or Scottish. Or something!
I love Torley. King Philip could not have demonstrated more clearly how out of touch he is with his user base than to have posted how happy, happy, happy he and his merry band of developers are, while the residents struggled to cope with the disastrous 1.11 release, if he had just posted "I'm all right, Jack" over and over again, and left it at that.
Torley on the other hand, posts the meaning of the Tao to her, which includes quite a lot of stuff about how she works for the residents, how she sees it. She does what she does best, bridges the gap. She's honest. She's open in a real way which invites us in, not the way that Philip's Blog shut us out and put up a chainlink fence.
She requests positive comments on the Tao of Linden, but I am feeling very negative about the way that Linden Lab is behaving at present. (Still positive about Torley, however.) She talks about Philip's post being transparency, but it surely wasn't, not for us. I got no insight into how the company relates to the customer, me from that post, just how they love each other. The 1.11 update broke a lot of stuff, was bugged, and didn't fix things that needed fixing. The in-world experience deteriorated significantly for me and for a lot of people. I'm not yet sure that the patch is going to improve things dramatically ....
This is the 18th in a series of largely demographic interviews that are conducted with established residents, to find out more about them and their involvement with Second Life, and to contrast the differences between their views and experiences and those of the newer residents. The questions may be tailored slightly for each interview; responses may be edited for purposes of clarity. 
This is the 16th in 
Without so much as a word from other Lindens until now, Torley LInden has commented on an 
Torley Linden 
Following the posting of Philip Linden's "Tao of Linden", Torley has 
